First Thoughts First

Ok, so, today I continued round and round with my wireless router difficulties.

My Netgear wireless router is 1.5 years old – make that new, so it is no longer covered under warranty and so anytime it decides it won’t interface with my Bellsouth modem I was told I can no longer get telephone support, even tho after having done so often I can pretty much troubleshoot it myself. This time tho, it wasn’t letting me log in to reconfigure it – usually the Ethernet bridge just needs to be reset after a storm or power outage, which happens quite frequently here in the summer. But, I digress. So I spent over an hour on the phone last night with Katrina from Bellsouth aka AT&T (that’s a whole other story eh?) At first she said I could buy a new modem for $100, ten easy payments. She was very nice and told me since I was a long-term, high-speed, home-networking customer, I could possibly get it for free. Call billing in the morning. So I do and well, their take is that I can pay $60, again in ten easy payments, (are there never hard payments?) for a modem/router combination. Hmmm, but what am I to do with this working modem I have? Do you have a recycling program? Do you personally recycle? Where are you? Aha, the Philippines. I’ve been there. I loved it, even though it was right after the coup and the street barricades, gunshot holes on the sides of buildings, and the mirrors on the ground to check for explosives under the cars entering the embassy freaked me out a bit. Oh, and the sign at the hotel desk that read, “Please check in your firearms” so mater-of-fact-ly. That and I was asked if I was a virgin at a press conference right after flying in. If only the American press was so straightforward. Hehe. But again I digress. The Philippines are islands. It’s even more important that we are aware of the onslaught of garbage as you embrace western culture. Let’s work together and make it our first thought to reuse and recycle. So I’m connected with billing where I spoke with Bong and she agreed to refund a part of my payments for networking to catch up until now. That and pay $60 for the new modem/router so I can do so. But what are we going to do with the working modem I have? You own it. Yes, but how about we put it back into service? Again she said, “You own it.” I just kept laughing and saying “How can we recycle it?” “ I can send you a prepaid sticker for free postage and you can send it back and we’ll refurbish it for someone else.” she finally admitted. That IMHO could be the first option, not the last. Planting the seeds, planting the seeds.